Thursday, September 2, 2010

Rose de Lautrec Garlic

One of my favorite garlics, Rose de Lautrec (I call it French Rose) actually does not grow well in Colorado, since it prefers warmer climates. This year in particular it was really stressed out during the 17 below zero days we had in December. It had strange-looking bulbs with no cloves (like an onion) or turned into clumps of tiny bulbils. Although at my friend's garden in Boulder, where it's slightly warmer, hers did fine. So I am encouraging you to try growing it yourself from the little bulbils I've salvaged from it this year.Plant them in the Fall, and at the end of next June harvest small bulbs. Then save the biggest cloves from the biggest bulbs and plant again to harvest bigger bulbs the following year. It will help to mulch your garlic and grow it in a warmer garden near the house.

Rose de Lautrec description:

An exceptionally beautiful garlic with bright pink cloves that tastes wonderful. It is good raw with cucumbers, tomatoes, hummous, baba ganoush, etc or cooked. The biggest difference between this garlic and others is that it stores until next Spring! It is by far the longest storing garlic I've ever grown. They bulbs always grow fairly small for me, but the taste, beauty and storage outweigh that shortfall. It is a "Creole" variety of garlic known for exceptional flavor.

Contacting WeeBee Farms

WeeBee Farms is a very small farm and is not set up for visitors, or farm tours at this point. Also, I am not big on email, due to lack of time and lack of patience with sitting in front of a computer. Generally, coming to see me on Saturday at the markets is the best way to reach me. When market is over for me in October, I am all sold out- unless I post otherwise on my blog. I have many requests to ship garlic during the season- but we don't ship since I sell out at market every year. If you need to reach me by email here is the address- weebeefarms@gmail.com

WeeBee Farms - Are we organic?

At the farmer's market, we are not allowed to call ourselves organic because we are not certified organic. However, we have been growing by organic standards since 1996. Our garlic fields have not had any chemicals since 1993 when we moved here.Garlic in the field- we enrich the soil with cover crops including buckwheat, rye, wheat, oats, peas, millet and sorghum. Every other year the garlic field is "fallow" and planted with these crops. We also till in some composted llama manure 3 weeks before planting. All garlic "seed" is organically grown. No pesticides or herbicides are ever used. No chemicals at all are used. We use organic seed for our cover crops to avoid pesticide residue that may harm pollinators. We have honey bees on the farm and are very conscious of the effects of the newer long-lasting neonicitinoid class of pesticide.Plants for sale in Spring- For seed starting we start with organic potting soil, mixed with worm castings for good bacteria. When potting up we add in our garden compost or llama/ goat compost. The seeds we buy are mostly organic, with very few exceptions. (Many certified organic growers don't use organic seeds, so it's always good to ask.) We never use Genetically modified seeds or treated seeds or even non-gmo seeds owned by Monsanto. For fertilizer we mostly rely on our homemade compost. Also we use worm castings for our pepper and tomato plants that we test for herbicide residue first, and sometimes our own compost tea.For our compost we use only manure from our own animals which have been fed hay with no herbicide or pesticides, and organic food scraps and other organic feed. This is to avoid any residual contamination from long- lasting herbicides that could harm the plants and long-lasting pesticides that could harm the pollinators that gather pollen from the plants.